Towns on the Eastern Border of the Swedish Great Power

Towns on the Eastern Border of the Swedish Great Power

Power Structures and Commercial Networks in the Second Half of the 17th Century

The Towns on the Eastern Border of the Swedish Great Power project explores the power and trade networks of five cities in the late 17th century. Nyen, Kexholm, Sortavala, Brahea and Kajaani located closest to the eastern border. Despite their small size, they were important commercial centers of their regions. The project examines interaction within and between cities, but also connections with other regions of the Swedish Empire and Russia. The aim is to bring a comparative perspective to microhistorical research, enabled by new digital methods. In cooperation with the National Archives of Finland, HTR technology is used to produce a digitalized corpus of sources that is analysed with digital network analysis tools. Network analysis, comparison of cities and a close reading of sources characteristic of microhistory are expected to reveal new features of the patterns of behaviour of urban communities in the early modern era.